So maybe you’ll come with us? I said suddenly. I hadn’t planned to say it. I hadn’t built it, move by move, the way you build a trap in chess. The words just flew out of my mouth, but the minute they reached my ears, I thought: what a great idea! Amir doesn’t go to the club any more anyway. He’ll be finished with his exams soon. And how long can he sit here and wait for Noa? Yes, I thought excitedly, he should come with us. I was already picturing us walking together in the streets of Sydney, and suddenly that city didn’t seem so scary any more.
I’d love to go with you, Amir said, but …
But what?! Why not?! I blurted out, picturing us sitting next to each other on the plane, going together to games of the Australian football league …
First of all, Amir said in the voice of someone who couldn’t be persuaded, I think you and your parents have a lot of lost time to make up for, and I don’t think anyone should stick himself in the middle.
But you wouldn’t be doing that! I yelled, and inside, I felt just like I did before, when we were playing: that no matter what I did now, my king would fall in the end.
And anyway, Amir said, I’ve done enough wandering. I’m tired of it. I promised myself that this time I’d stay and wait for Noa.
What if she doesn’t come back? I asked.
If she doesn’t, Amir said, then she doesn’t. But whatever happens, you and I won’t stop being friends.
And just how will we do that? I asked. Amir was quiet for a minute, the way grown-ups are quiet after they promise a kid something just to shut him up, and the kid picks up on it.
*
I can imagine Amir walking in front of the pictures, his hands behind his back, quiet at first, smiling at my mother’s picture — which really did come out a little funny — recognising Etti Ankri right away (he adores her), wondering where I dug up that parking attendant, lingering a while in front of my portrait, then turning around and saying: horrible.
Really? I ask him in my imagination, and he answers, are you joking, Noa? It’s huge. It’s the strongest work you’ve ever done. The most perfect. You can see in every frame that you spent hours on it. That’s true, I say, straightening my shoulders, I really did invest time, but it can’t be that you don’t have any comments. Listen, he says, looking at everything again, if you force yourself to look for it, you can always find something. What? I press him, knowing that’s his code for ‘I have some criticisms.’ The arrangement, he says, hitting my G-spot of fears right on the nose. That matrix, three by three, is more suitable for a TV game show than for a project about longing. Why, I ask, arguing with him in my mind, defending my arrangement with my life, but knowing very well that he’s right and that very soon, my claims will die.
God. I’d like him to be here for real. Not just in my imagination. I’d like him to see the corrected arrangement. To hug me. To kiss me on the neck. On the mouth.
But what if he doesn’t want to?
I remember that American writer, the one who said in an interview that he finds it difficult to write when his wife is in the house, so he goes off to the woods by himself for three months every year. Later on in the interview, which appeared at the end of the supplement along with the continuations of other interviews, the journalist asked who he gives the manuscript to when he’s finished, who is actually his first reader. My wife, he answered without hesitation, and I thought then, when I read the interview, it can’t be. Why does she agree? After he left her alone with the kids for three months, how could she bring herself to sit with his pile of papers and read with an open heart, as if she weren’t angry?
*
Angry with her? Of course I’m angry with her, I said to David. OK, I understand that she had to breathe, so did I, and the truth is, I was pretty glad to have a break. But what’s the big drama about picking up a phone? Why does everything with her have to be so dramatic? So extreme?
And what would you do if she called you now? David asked.
I have no idea, I said.
So there you go, David said, taking his guitar out of its case and starting to tune it. Every conversation with him reaches the point where words get tired and let music take over.
A new Licorice song? I asked.
No, he said. An instrumental segment. We’re thinking about opening the album with it. Tell me what you think.
I closed my eyes. The first sounds began. I leaned back into the sofa and let my thoughts drop away, drop away, until only pure emotion was left in my body. I couldn’t give the emotion a name. And I didn’t want to. All I wanted was to ride on it for as long as it continued. The sounds twisted along like a narrow path that goes up and down a mountain, in and out of houses, through people, and every time you think it’s ending, it starts all over again. I rode on that path, I rode with my eyes closed and my hands spread to the sides. Rustling branches caressed me and birds landed on my shoulders. Leaves kept falling, falling, falling, tickling my ears. The wind whistled around me and spiralled me up towards the sheep-shaped clouds, setting me down gently, gently on the roof of an unfamiliar house.